Whatever Remains
by Dayja
Summary: Sherlock dies.  When he comes back, he takes detective work to a whole new level.  Featuring psychic Sherlock.
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: Whatever Remains

**Author**: Dayja

**Summary**: Sherlock dies. When he comes back, he takes detective work to a whole new level.

**Genre**: Sherlock BBC, gen but strong friendship, AU, ESP

**Warning**: Some violence, character death (sort of), occasional but rare strong language, wip

**Rating**: PG-13, teen

**Spoilers**: nothing specific but references to the first series might come up.

**Disclaimer**: I do not own/am not associated with Sherlock.

Chapter 1

It was strange how it didn't hurt. The knife had been very sharp and his adrenalin had been pumping and he hadn't even realized the knife had found its mark until after the fight was over and knifeman was lying unconscious in the remains of a broken crate, his own knife stuck through his hand. Sherlock was glowing with success and energy until it came to his attention that his sleeve was wet. He thought it odd because there was no water around.

Then he looked, and said "oh". So the particularly vicious swipe he had thought he had managed to avoid was actually a hit. And now his arm was covered in blood.

He spent a good minute simply staring at the wound, his mind analyzing it and the rate of the blood that still flowed freely with every beat of his heart and he thought, _this should hurt_. It didn't feel real, and so it didn't feel like it could be truly life threatening. There was no thrill of danger or icy terror that his blood was draining away. Then he shuddered, and it did hurt, and his mind shuddered for a moment before deciding that perhaps he should be getting help.

His fingers were slippery when he pulled out his phone, and it bothered him that he was getting it dirty. He managed to text John anyway, because John was a doctor and knew about these things. And then he thought he really should be applying pressure because free flowing blood was bad, and it _hurt_, and the world was starting to go a bit dizzy. It might have helped if he sat down but the ground here was dirty and old and looked entirely uninviting. He started to text Lestrade that he had a criminal for him to pick up when his legs decided he was going to sit anyway, and he dropped the phone.

He was growing cold. He knew this was a bad sign. He didn't think a major artery had been sliced through or he would already be dead, but he knew he was in danger and should be doing something about it. It still didn't feel quite real or like there should be real consequences to a momentary lapse in a knife fight that he hadn't even felt. He hadn't felt it so it couldn't kill him now. His phone started ringing. He stopped his half-hearted attempts at pressure to try to pick up the phone.

It took a few tries, his fingers felt clumsy and slick with blood.

"Hello?"

"Sherlock?" The voice on the other end sounded worried. "Sherlock, tell us where you are."

"On the ground," he answered sensibly, and frowning because he didn't want to talk to John on the phone. He wanted John to be there. John would make the blood go away that was sticky and wet and cold and completely ruining his clothes. There was a brief silence over the phone.

"Where is the ground?" The question made no proper sense because the answer was in the question; the ground was on the ground. Sherlock frowned, considering this new riddle.

"Under me," he finally decided.

"Sherlock," the voice said decisively, the kind of voice that spoke of authority and a need for absolute obedience, "You ran ahead of us; we need to know, which way did you go?"

Sherlock considered this.

"I went…I…" His thoughts were twisting away from him. The answer was easy, he could almost see his rout, but it kept dancing away. His mind didn't dance away like that; it didn't desert him when it came to a simple memory of an event that had just happened. He was starting to feel scared in ways that the blood itself didn't affect him. "John? Where…you should come here, I need…"

"Sherlock, I'm trying, I'm coming, I promise, just…I need you to help me. I need to know where you are." There was something odd about John's voice, disturbing. It wasn't the way John was supposed to sound. Almost like he was angry, but not quite.

"I'm..I…left," he managed to say, "Ran left…s'wet, don't like it." He heard John's voice again but not the words. Holding the phone was tiring. He wanted John to be there, perhaps with a blanket. "John? Come…s'cold. Where…John?" Where was John? He heard his voice but he was alone, lying on the ground. Why was he lying on the ground? Cold and wet and sticky and this place smelled. And he was so tired. He thought someone had told him to talk, that sleeping was bad.

Then warm hands grabbed him, pulling him up. John?

"Damn you fucker!" a snarling voice growled, and the world tilted, the hold on him clumsy as the stranger tried to hold him with his injured hand and threaten him with his other. Sherlock frowned at him. The man was supposed to be unconscious still. Sherlock had time to think 'this isn't good' and then there was an explosion and he fell.

And finally, finally, John was there. He wasn't alone. Sherlock managed a brief smile of satisfaction before the world slid sideways.

Then it just went.

When the world returned it came back too strong and not strong enough, like waking up in a cartoon. His brain worked and it didn't; he understood everything he saw as details and facts but the facts refused to add up and make sense. Like the fact that he didn't hurt and his mind was perfectly clear but he wasn't in hospital. Like the fact that he was still in the old warehouse and it was filled with people and John was leaning over a body, arms straight leaned over him, crushing the body's chest over and over while a white faced Anderson was doing something to the body's arm and Lestrade shouted into his phone. Like the fact that knifeman was standing in the middle of all this, leering at him, and none of the policemen wandering around were restraining him.

Sherlock wanted John to come over and explain it, but he was a doctor and looked a bit busy and Sherlock wasn't quite so selfish to try and interrupt his resuscitation attempts. Lestrade didn't look like he'd answer either, so he sought out another familiar looking face to try.

Sally Donovan was standing over a dead body. Since this was a sight Sherlock often saw, this didn't seem odd. This body was obviously beyond any resuscitation efforts, considering the hole in the side of its head. The expression on Sally's face was a bit odd, Sherlock noted, a mixture of disgust, fury, and deep satisfaction. And then Sherlock looked again and felt weird because her expression was perfectly blank. Sherlock might be good at reading people, whether they were lying or not and what motives might be driving them, but he still found emotions tricky. And her blank expression had no tells. He decided, for the moment, to not worry about it.

"Sally," he said, and waited for her to turn to him and answer with the familiar, "Freak." She said nothing. She didn't even look at him. Sherlock frowned. That wasn't how it was supposed to work. She was supposed to look annoyed and eye him suspiciously and he was supposed to earn that annoyance. She tells him he's a heartless psychopath and he tells her she's a blind imbecile and then he solves the case and proves it. It's their thing.

"Donovan," he tries again, in case it was the first name thing that had her ignoring him. She didn't look at him. Not even when he moved right in front of her.

"She can't see you." And knifeman walked up, still leering unpleasantly, "I might be dead, but I'm not going alone."

"Don't be preposterous," Sherlock answered, frowning. He avoided looking in the direction of John and the body.

"Look at us!" the man laughed, far too delighted for someone who had just died. Sherlock felt slimy just looking at him. Knifeman had no problem wandering up to the frantic activity located around John. "Isn't it pathetic, how he just keeps pounding away at your useless flesh?"

"Shut up," Sherlock answered, staring now. Because suddenly the body John was leaning over made far too much sense. And it was very very wrong that he was standing outside of it. And damn it, this wasn't how death was supposed to work. He had been almost certain that spirits didn't walk the earth, though his mind had still been open on the afterlife thing. If this was the afterlife then…well, it wasn't fair. It was too disappointing.

"I bet I could still hurt you, like this," knifeman said suddenly, "I bet I could rip you to shreds, surrounded by your friends and them not doing a thing. I wonder what happens when you kill a ghost?"

And somehow knifeman still had his knife and Sherlock had…nothing. And knifeman charged, and Sherlock tried to twist away and something colder than ice grasped his throat and for that moment all the color and emotion in the world dissolved into ice and he knew a fear deeper than any he had ever known, the fear of disappearing and being nothing and alone for eternity.

Then knifeman was gone, and the world shuddered back into place.

He didn't see what happened. No opening chasm to hell, no bright white light. He got an impression of hooves and feathers and heat and cold, of something so much larger than himself, beyond himself. Terror and Love and Justice. For a moment, it felt like he was feeling all of everyone at once, like he had gone utterly mad.

And then it was gone and he was alone.

The living were still there, shadows of light and fire and emotion. John was a maelstrom of fury and fear and sorrow and pain and hope and love. He was staring at where the paramedics had taken over on Sherlock's body. And Sherlock wanted to return to him and didn't know how.

Side by side two friends stood, each completely alone.

Then something _pulled_, and the world dissolved and rearranged itself into pain and cold and lungs that burned and a heart that struggled. A corpse drew in breath. A still heart stumbled into life.

Afterwards, he didn't really remember his short episode as a spirit. He remembered a deep fear of not existing, of being completely alone. And a bit like muscle memory, something deep inside him remembered what it was like to look into the universe and _feel_.


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Note: I make no promises whatsoever for updating this story in a timely manner. It still doesn't have a proper plot outlined in my head. If WIPs drive you insane, seriously, don't read this. But I will try to not make the wait quite as long for the next bit.

Chapter 2

Sherlock's first thought upon wakening was that there were too many people in the room. If pressed, he wouldn't have been able to say why. It wasn't that he heard them whispering, shuffling around; the room was almost silent except for the usual noises which told him he was in a hospital room almost before he knew he was awake. The air just felt heavy, pressed upon, radiating the sort of atmosphere which a large crowd forced into an enclosed space might give off.

Then, just when he wanted to fight the lethargy, to force himself completely into wakefulness just to get them to go away, the atmosphere cleared, and there were only two in the room. Both were familiar. One smelt of perfume and its lips pressed briefly against his forehead.

"Get well, baby," a voice whispered. And if he had had any strength, he might have mumbled something like 'yes, Mummy'. Instead he went back to sleep.

The second awakening, or perhaps the third or fourth, he finally worked up to opening his eyes. He expected to see John, and for a moment he did, sitting on the chair, face twisted with worry and crying in a way that was completely un-John-like. Perhaps that was how Sherlock was able to see through it so quickly, because the next moment he saw quite clearly that he was alone. There was no John, not even a doctor or nurse, just beeping equipment.

He felt strange. Like he had woken up but gone on dreaming all the same. If he hadn't experienced them before, he would have been tempted to blame whatever pain killers they had him on, but that wasn't quite it. He shifted, trying to pull himself into a more comfortable position, and noticed his arm. It hurt, but in a distant way as though the pain couldn't touch him. It was bandaged.

He was also thirsty; desperately thirsty in fact. If he had called out, which would make no sense as no one was there, then he suspected only a croak would have emerged. He didn't try to speak anyway. He stared at the chair where John was not.

Ghost John was still there. Sherlock couldn't see him, not really, but he was there. John had been there. Sherlock knew that for a number of reasons, starting with his analysis of John's character and ending with the cup of tea placed on the left side of the chair. None of those reasons included apparitions or feelings or the swirl of muddy color occasionally deepening to pure blue or wisps of deep red that was clinging over the chair. Because the colors weren't there anymore than John was there and his eyes didn't want to look anymore and his head was beginning to throb in time with the beeping and then to _ache_ in a way his arm still didn't.

So he closed his eyes and didn't see the way the colors still burned on the inside of his lids.

He opened them again when a doctor came in, and the doctor didn't hurt his head because the colors clinging around him were so pale that Sherlock could decide he didn't see them at all. It was obviously an optical illusion anyway, since the man was wearing a white coat.

"Where's John," was the first thing Sherlock tried to say, and it turned out he was right about his voice croaking, not that the doctor seemed to mind. The doctor gave him some ice chips and told him he was doing well, except for having a bit of a fever, and he wanted to ask a few questions.

Sherlock didn't want to answer. He wanted John to come back. Seeing ghost John in that chair had made him uneasy in a way that was both horrendously unrational and annoyingly unshakeable. Obviously John had not turned into a ghost. The details around why Sherlock was waking up in a hospital bed were a bit hazy, but he distinctly remembered being alone when he was injured, and therefore John couldn't have been injured himself. Not to mention all the other concrete signs that John had been there before.

The doctor, however, was persistent, and maintained an easy, pleasant persona even after Sherlock told him he was either a widower or a cheater and that the woman he was sleeping with had a severe overbite. The doctor merely admitted, far too calmly, to widower and didn't ask Sherlock how he could possibly know but instead demanded stupid questions like the name of the prime minister and animals starting with 'H'. The first he admitted to knowing grudgingly and the second led to a brief argument as to whether hydatids counted or if hyraxes were something Sherlock had made up. Sherlock was just getting ready to really defend himself too and perhaps rile up Dr. Smiles-too-much into reacting when a voice interrupted.

"You forget solar systems and the universe, but you know what a hyrax is?" said a voice at the door, and Sherlock promptly dropped the entire conversation in favor of looking at John.

Real John, not ghost John. The colors were still there, as though ghost John were trying to meld himself with real John. Obviously Sherlock was hallucinating or something, most likely due to his medication or fever. The doctor who Sherlock hadn't bothered to learn the name of could see John too, so that part wasn't a hallucination.

"There was a case I had," Sherlock explained briefly, still staring. John was smiling in that easy way he had as though he hadn't been sitting in that chair worrying for however long it had been before Sherlock woke up. The hallucination colors were choppy and agitated and rather distracting by being only halfway there, vanishing to nothing whenever he tried to get a proper look. "You look…" solid, real, powerful "tired."

"Yes, well," he said, and then, "New rule, Sherlock. If you ever run ahead like that again, I will stab you myself."

"You're lying," Sherlock said instantly, a curious jerk reaction that he hadn't quite meant to vocalize. But John was lying…and he wasn't. It was interesting. The red was flaring slightly, though John's expression didn't change.

"Serious, Sherlock, running ahead is bad."

"Yes," Sherlock answered, because that was true, and something in John's expression, or maybe the hallucination bit, relaxed. It was all tied together and it made it hard to remember that the colors which seemed to scream everything it meant to be John weren't _real_.

"Well," said Dr. Too-Cheerful, "Do you want to keep going or do you need a minute?" Which was obviously a trick question; either Sherlock admitted to needing a break or Sherlock gave permission for the nuisance to continue. So Sherlock refused to answer. He didn't need the other doctor anyway, now that his own proper doctor was back. "Sherlock?"

"Give us a minute," John said with a placating smile and finally the doctor left. Then it was just John and John was staring and Sherlock was looking back, trying to fill in the gaps of his own memory. Slowly, John approached the bed until they could have touched, if they wanted.

"You're awake," John said, obvious, but said quietly. Sherlock didn't quite know how to respond to that. If it were someone else, he'd probably berate them for saying something so pointless. But it was John, and sometimes John said things that meant something else, like a puzzle, so it wasn't annoying at all.

"Yes," Sherlock answered, because he couldn't work out what John wanted this time, and then, as long as they were sharing the obvious, "You weren't here." He didn't mean it as a reprimand, but John still flinched. "I mean, you were here before. I could see your tea, and you left your colors all over the chair, except that part isn't real."

"Colors?" John asked, and he looked a bit worried again, and Sherlock hadn't meant to mention the colors. Still, they were there, and Sherlock was finding it very hard to care. Except that John was worried.

"You were here but you weren't real," he explained, trying to make the worried look go away so John would look comfortable again. And Sherlock's head hurt again and his arm was throbbing, and John was radiating in ways he wasn't supposed to. Like he might not be any more real than ghost John. So Sherlock stuck out his hand and poked him, then stroked his fingers across a very solid, vibrantly real chest that was warm and safe and _John_.

"Sherlock?"

"My chest hurts. Why does my chest hurt if it was my arm that got stabbed?" And it did hurt, all at once and unexpectedly, pain breaking sharply even as he stubbornly kept stroking John's sweater.

"Chest compressions can do that," John answered, covering his hand with his own, and it was warm and lovely but his head hurt. John was saying something very significant and it wasn't making sense.

"I don't remember…" he said, frowning and not liking the way his memory over the past few days was as insubstantial as the smoky colors still dancing like fire around John's head.

"You were a bit dead at the time," John answered, his tone light and gentle and exactly the opposite of the way dark lines crept through the red and blue. Sherlock frowned. And John was smiling and that was good even if fear and anger were hiding around the edges. Sherlock was too busy with this new puzzle to properly answer but John didn't seem to mind. He kept talking, maybe to Sherlock, maybe to the darkness. "You…we thought…you went into shock. Your heart stopped. We didn't know…how you might wake up."

"Hence Dr. Sunshine's tests," Sherlock answered, processing this while he continued to stroke the fuzziness that meant John was still solid.

"Dr. Sun…you mean Dr. Charles?" John was still worried, but he was also smiling. So Sherlock smiled back and tried, for once, not to connect the facts together into the only possible truth.

Sherlock is seeing things that aren't there. Sherlock's brain went without oxygen for longer than is medically recommended. It could be the drugs, it could be the fever. But unlikely. He's been on drugs before. Dr. Annoying told him the fever was low. Remove the impossible and whatever remains, however…distasteful, terrifying, unwanted…must be the truth. Sherlock has brain damage.

He doesn't tell John this. He lets John fuss over him, even lets him call the other doctor back in. Both John and Sherlock ignore how unusual it is for Sherlock to latch onto John's hand or how equally unusual it is for John to hold on just as tightly. They are warm and they are alive.

And maybe, the next time he wakes up, he will be properly cured. The colors will go away.


End file.
